1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for renewing business, professional and personal contacts. More particularly, the present invention is related to a system and method for automatically selecting whom a user should keep in touch with and displaying such selections to the user.
2. Description of Prior Art
Remembering anniversaries, birthdays, meetings, bill-payment, special occasions or other important dates or events can become a large task when you have a busy schedule. Typically, people are in a constant state of catch up; there are always more demands than free time. Yet when there is free time, it gets idled away. One of the first things to get squeezed out of people's time is other people (e.g., business, professional and personal contacts). For example, people frequently fail to follow up on business accounts that went to their competitors. Or, when was the last time an individual saw colleagues from their university, acquaintances from prior year's conventions, friends from previous projects or jobs? Or, when was the last time the individual invited their neighbors over for dinner or followed up on a Christmas card?
From a professional, personal, and/or business stand point, the cost to an individual and their company is tremendous. An individual is most effective when they are connected or networked. Contacts that were previously made could be the source of new accounts, new sales, new job applicants, new ideas, the latest in research, joint projects, etc. The cost is also tremendous at a personal level, since their social net is what sustains and nurtures them.
A number of systems have been developed for maintaining and organizing communication with business contacts. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,831,611, issued to Kennedy, et al., discloses a process management system that includes a graphical process editor facilitating the creation of communication processes by a programmer on a graphical user interface. This patent presents relationships between the various conditionally executed events that are graphically represented to the programmer of the communication process while the programmer is creating or modifying the communication process. Events selection procedures conditionally direct the flow of execution by the process manager to one of the attached child events of the event selection procedures. In cases where processing the child event is conditioned upon the completion of the parent event, the child event may be delayed until the parent event is completed. However, this patent makes no mention of displaying a candidate's image to the user in order for the user to make contact, nor does it dynamically present possible contacts.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,726 issued to Cameron et al., discloses a contact management system that aids customer service representatives in providing service to customers in connection with products, information, and services. The management system stores customer relationship information and business events related to a customer. However, this patent is not used as a reminder service, nor does it display images of candidates to be contacted.
The prior art fails to provide an ongoing system and method for automatically selecting from a contact list whom a user should keep in touch with and display such selection(s) to the user. The user is presented with an image of a business associate, professional contact, and/or friend/family. Seeing that image reminds the user of how long it has been since they last met. The user then selects (e.g., clicks with a computer mouse) the image of the displayed candidate to make contact. Furthermore, the system dynamically presents possible contacts to the user. The prior art fails to include the above noted features as well as other benefits described, illustrated, and claimed hereafter.
Whatever the precise merits, features and advantages of the above cited references, none of them achieve or fulfills the purposes of the present invention. These and other objects are achieved by the detailed description that follows.